Rating: 
Summary: People this is the Standard edition
Review: ...Microsoft Visual Basic Standard edition has always been a crippled version of the Pro version. The compilers and .NET Framework on top of which all versions of VB.NET and VS.NET sit is completely free to download! On top of that Microsoft has made available a free IDE for ASP.NET development called WebMatrix.If you are looking for a VB.NET counterpart to VB6 Standard edition then, this product fits the bill perfectly. Now regarding the VB.NET language and the Framework, anyone who claims this is "as slow is Java" is running on outdated hardware or doesn't have enough memory for the VM. If you have a Pentium 3 based system with 256-MEG or greater, you're .NET apps will run so close to native code speed it will be near impossible to tell they are "managed", if you were to code the same functionality in Java2 and run it on the same hardware spec it would still run about half the speed of the .NET code. The managed framework is largely based around Java2, but it has many improvements over J2EE, most notable is transparent support for WebServices and ASP.NET (which I have discovered is a beautiful thing). Start here or start elsewhere, if you are currently using Visual Studio 6, you need to move on up. Give VB.NET one month and you'll never look back.
Rating: 
Summary: VB Programmers beware!
Review: First of all, don't even waste your time or money on the standard edition. There's nothing standard about it, it's more like a trial version then anything else. Second, I'm not sure why Microsoft is calling this Visual Basic because it's a near complete different language. They have revamped VB to be more like Java. VB.net is purely interpreted with it's own VM and memory manager/garbage collector. The complied VB.net apps run much more slowly than VB 6 apps. Quite honest, with all the new changes, I don't see any incentives of using VB for windows apps anymore. I can get the same performance and functionality using Java now, plus Java is platform independent.
Rating: 
Summary: A not so Basic BASIC
Review: First: Be aware you must have Windows XP Pro, not the home edition.(or one of the other OS's listed).
This is an OK system. I only bought it because I could not get Visual Basic 6.
This is nothing like the earlier BASIC systems. For example: it take a full page of code just to print one line to a printer.
Somewhere along the line Microsoft has forgotten the concept that BASIC stands for Beginners All purpose Symbolic Instruction Code. This is a complex language intended to produce Web XML pages. It integrates Microsofts TOTAL demand to stick to windows and windows forms.
This also comes with ZERO documentation. There is a small book to get you started on a simple project, but the on-line reference is useless.
Plan on spending [money] on books including a language reference to even do the simplest things.
Rating: 
Summary: Good Choice for International Customers
Review: I bought VB.NET in a recent visit to the US. It works well and handles windows forms, ASP.NET projects and Web services, as well as building great console apps and distribution and deployment apps using Windows Installer (why buy Installshield or Wise?). If you want to build winform components then, this is not for you, but otherwise it does what most developers want. Despite comments by other reviewers about mail-in benefits and the purchase of VS.NET, VS.NET is not available internationally (nor to the visitor to the US) at anything like the price of VB.NET (in New Zealand it's $US1100 versus VB.NET at $90). I've now converted several major VB6 projects to VB.NET and they work well and the IDE is stable and bug-free. Highly recommended, providing you can get your head around the object orientation of the latest .NET products!
Rating:
Summary: Too Many Great New Features
Review: I like all the new language improvements from variable initialization to ergonomic keywords for object oriented programming (OOP). Great job! Just one problem, together these new features produce TOO much complexity! Visual Basic.Net has become an ergonomic JAVA. The language now gets in the way of creative RAD programming. Microsoft should have simplified OOP in the way Python did objects.
Rating:
Summary: It's a 1.0 version
Review: I like some of the new features, but VB6 was a more mature product. I was frustrated in that I spent a couple hundred dollars on additional books and all assumed you had visual studio.net. I am selling this to fund my purchase of Visual Studio.net. As someone said, it is handy if you want to start learning and delay purchase of visual studio.net for a few months.
Rating:
Summary: Don't waste your money on this one
Review: I made the unfortunate mistake of purchasing the "Standard" version of VB.NET. They should have called this VB.NET Trial, not Standard. It is very misleading as to what you can do with it. I would have rated this product a zero if it was available. If you want to do anything more than creating simple executables or simple ASP.NET pages, then go for the VB.NET Professional Upgrade. After the rebates, it's only [a little more] bucks more than the Standard version, and you get most of the tools you would expect in a "Standard" version. With VB.NET Standard, you cannot upgrade VB6 code, you cannot make libraries (DLL) or controls (OCX), there's no database designer, no deployment project designer, etc. So if you really want to do anything fun/useful with VB.NET, spend the extra couple of dollars, get the professional upgrade, then cash in the rebates. I wish I had.
Rating:
Summary: frustratingly impossible to install
Review: I never could get the install to work. They ship you three CDs, and the first thing the install asks for is "Windows Component Update for Visual Basic .Net". Of course they don't send you this, and good luck finding it on their website.
Rating:
Summary: Another Microsoft [Bad deal]
Review: I purchased Microsoft Visual Basic.NET Standard under the misinformation that I was getting an actual functioning development package. I also purchased a book to help me get started "Using MS Visual Basic.NET" from Que. It was only after I attempted to work through the web application example did I find the problem. I only received a small portion of the program, which did not even let me work though the simple examples in the book. Not only did I need the "Professional" version to perform any of the examples shown in the book; I needed to upgrade my operating system from XP Home Edition to XP Professional. This fact was well hidden in the documentation. In fact, it was only when I tried to install some missing files did I find that I could not create web applications. I could not create DLL's. I couldn't do a lot of the basic functions. So in order to just use the program as advertised, I would need to spend another [$]+ to upgrade to the Professional version of VB and another [$] for XP Professional. Sure with rebate, it is "only" [$], but I am already into it for [$] for the VB.NET Standard. The advertisement on the box states that I can upgrade my VB 6 applications, create XML documents, create class libraries. I can't even work through the simple examples, because the tools are not included. Don't bother purchasing this edition. It may be a great product for the professional programer, but it is priced out of the league for the rest of us mortals.
Rating: 
Summary: This should be a trial package
Review: I wrote a small program consisting of several forms. You'd think it would be easy to deploy using the wizard, right? No. You can't just click a few buttons and create a program file that will run on any Windows Machine. I went to the exe file that was in my programs folder and moved it to my desktop. Guess what? You can't even move the exe file and have a program run like a normal exe file. Creating your own programs for fun that you can share with others is not doable with this product, which is what I wanted. My advice is, stick to VB 6 if you don't need this for work or school and haven't upgraded to Windows XP,
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